Lt. Edward C. Jordan - The War Years
Pilot, 603rd Squadron
Introduction
In the late 1980s, I decided to write the war history of my dad, Edward Jordan. Dad had died in February 1981 at age 58, several months after being diagnosed with lymphoma. His disease was not thought to be fatal and it was of great sadness to the family that he was unexpectedly taken so young. At the time Ed, or more formally Edward C. Jordan, was employed by United Airlines, Inc. and was enjoying flying the Boeing 747 weekly to Hawaii from Chicago. His passion for flying began when he was seven years old as he followed Charles Lindberg's celebrated exploits. However, it was World War II and the Army Air Corp that gave him his chance to be the aviator he always dreamed of.
After he died I began to realize that there was nothing written down about those stories he told us at the kitchen table about doing barrel rolls in Texas or B-17 missions to Berlin and Peenemunde and our memories were beginning to fade.
Thus I began to jot down what my mom, my sisters, and I remembered. I sorted through old memorabilia from the war, talked with and wrote to some of dad's war colleagues, became a member of the of the 398th Bomb Group Memorial Association and read every one of the articles in their quarterly, the Flak News. My story of Ed Jordan's WWII Aviation Career is the result of these endeavors.
I have been writing and revising this story for many years and this process will certainly continue, but I have decided to make it available now as part of the Veteran's Personal History Section of the 398th Web Pages, of which I am the webmaster. My hope is that by making Ed's story available it will not only help preserve our memory of him and what he did but also will provide to history buffs and others a sense of the times, choices, and challenges that men faced in those war years of the 1940s.
Since I had few written notes from my dad on what had happened, I needed to reconstruct his history from 398th records, old letters, and conversations with some of Ed's wartime colleagues. Specifically I wish to thank Clarence King, John Hobbs, Robert Hopkins, Ed Jones, and Bill Taylor who were with Ed in the 398th in Rapid City and/or Nuthampstead. I also wish to thank Steve Llewellyn, a close colleague in Army Air Cadets in Texas Class 44-A and who went onto fly B-17s for the 381st.
In May 2002, I prepared the Ed Jordan 398th Photo CD, which contains scans of Ed's WWII pictures with companion picture description text. Copies of this CD were made available to the 398th Bomb Group Memorial Association Archives, the 8th Air Force Archives in Savannah, and the Hertfordshire Archives in England near the old base at Nuthampstead.
Personal History Information
- Veteran: Edward C. Jordan
- Position: Co-Pilot/Pilot
- Squadron: 603rd
- Date of Personal History: February 1, 2003, updated October 2008
- Author: Dave Jordan
- Submitted to 398th Web Pages by: Dave Jordan